Matt Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Mike De Souza, The Narwhal

The phone call to the B.C. premier’s office came on a Saturday in May 2023, one day after a scathing  inspection report detailed multiple environmental infractions along the  route of a major gas pipeline under construction in the province.

The report,  issued by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, outlined damage to  sensitive wetlands and other ecosystems on Wet’suwet’en territory in  northwest B.C. It detailed howTC Energy allegedly failed to protect  areas around its Coastal GasLink pipeline project from environmental impacts associated with construction and spring snowmelt.

As a result, the assessment office said in  its report that it would keep stop-work orders on pipeline construction  in place, potentially triggering delays and driving up costs on a  multibillion dollar project already facing significant cost overruns. 

B.C. Premier David Eby’s office told The  Narwhal it believes this report triggered the Saturday phone call it  accepted from TC Energy executive Liam Illife, who recently resigned  over comments he made during an internal call in March about the company’s outsized influence over governments.

Eby’s office said it didn’t keep records of what was discussed and declined to explain exactly what happened  during that weekend phone call.

“The premier’s office would not discuss  the enforcement activities or approach of the [B.C. Environmental  Assessment Office], but companies will sometimes flag to government what  their intended public response may be to such an event,” Eby’s  spokesperson Bhinder Sajan told The Narwhal in an email.

“To be clear, we don’t have a specific  record of the call, but given the timing you provided, we believe it may  have been related to this event,” Sajan said, referring to the release  of the report outlining Coastal GasLink’s environmental infractions and  the assessment office’s decision to maintain stop-work orders on  pipeline construction.

‘Call up the premier’s office on a Saturday’

Illife, a former BC NDP staffer, worked  for various ministries in former B.C. premier John Horgan’s government  between July 2017 and June 2022. Iliffe began lobbying the Eby  government in April 2023, less than a year after leaving his government  job.

The provincial lobbyist registry indicates  Illife lobbied Don Bain, Eby’s deputy chief of staff, five times over  13 months. The filings also indicate Illife lobbied Eby’s office on the  weekend immediately following the release of the inspection report about  various pipeline infrastructure, including the Coastal GasLink project —  considered by the oil and gas industry to be an important part of a  plan to ramp up exports of fossil fuels and grow the Canadian economy.

The Coastal GasLink pipeline will supply natural gas for the new LNG Canada and Cedar LNG export projects on B.C.’s coast. Natural gas is a fossil fuel mostly composed of methane, which is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period in terms of heating the planet. It is extracted mainly by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process that uses massive amounts of fresh water. Fracking activity  in northeast B.C. is poised to escalate as the export projects get  underway.

Calgary-based TC Energy described the phone call as lobbying activity, according to filings in a provincial registry.  

The B.C. government’s vague description of  Illife’s weekend lobbying of the premier’s office leaves several  stakeholders questioning whether fossil fuel executives have privileged  access to government, including possible influence on the outcome of  environmental inspections and enforcement activity.

“The fact that the company could call up  the premier’s office on a Saturday and have a discussion about it is  rather infuriating,” Shannon McPhail, executive director of Skeena  Watershed Conservation Coalition, told The Narwhal. “I wish I had [had]  that kind of access when I filed concerns with the various regulators,  managers, agencies [and] ministries at both the provincial government  and federal government level.”

Iliffe lobbied the government 12 times in total from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2024 when he left his  job, according to the provincial lobbyist registry. This includes  lobbying Eby’s office five times.

The filing in the registry indicates one  of the intended outcomes of Iliffe’s lobbying was the “development,  establishment, amendment or termination of any program, policy,  directive or guideline of the government of British Columbia or a  provincial entity.”

While the registry doesn’t require  lobbyists to disclose exactly what they discuss during their  interactions with government officials, Iliffe and other TC Energy  officials suggested on their internal call they succeeded in persuading  different government officials to weaken some environmental policies and  loosen regulations that may cut into the company’s profits.

Iliffe, the company and the B.C.  government have all said some of the former TC Energy executive’s claims  on the internal company call were not true, but they did not elaborate  or specify which claims were unfounded. 

The Narwhal first approached the B.C. government in June with questions about Iliffe’s claims on the company  recording. The premier’s office subsequently said it conducted an  internal review of Iliffe’s claims about how the company had influenced  the province and concluded they were false. The province’s attorney  general subsequently asked a provincial watchdog to conduct its own  review of lobbying activity by TC Energy.

Companies are allowed to lobby governments  about public policy and decisions in Canada and governments generally  keep track of the activity by requiring companies to report each  interaction on public registries. In B.C., the registrar of lobbying is a  watchdog empowered to enforce a lobbying transparency law and ensure  lobbyists and public servants comply with the legislation.

Environmental assessment office  inspections and regulatory orders are normally carried out and  implemented without any involvement of elected officials. However, B.C.  regulatory agencies charged with enforcement activities, including the  environmental assessment office, are accountable to cabinet ministers  who have some decision-making powers on regulatory matters.

Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’moks said  he doesn’t see why TC Energy would talk to the premier’s office about  an inspection conducted by compliance and enforcement officers with the  environmental assessment office.

“Absolutely it’s improper … because that is an independent enforcement arm,” he said in an interview.

The premier’s office noted that Bain’s job required him to engage with representatives from industry,  environmental groups, local governments and First Nations. Based on the  deputy chief of staff’s “recollection, Mr. Iliffe would at times relay  his company’s commitment to fully respond to issues raised by regulatory  agencies,” Eby’s office said.

In an emailed response to questions, the  B.C. Environment Ministry also said it is not uncommon for industry to  update government officials about how companies are responding to  inspections.

Eby’s office did not respond to questions  about why it didn’t keep records of Bain’s weekend discussion with  Illife. Bain declined an interview request about the lobbying, but the  premier’s office emailed a statement on Bain’s behalf.

“I make recommendations about further  engagement and all other recommendations based on the priorities of  Premier Eby which are focused on the best interest of British  Columbians,” Bain said in response to The Narwhal’s questions about his  conversations with Iliffe.

In 2018, Bain was among at least five B.C. government staffers who allegedly engaged in the improper deletion of government records  under former premier Horgan. The story came to light when requests made  under freedom of information legislation revealed Bain and other senior  staff had been deleting their sent emails for months, according to a  report in Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper.

At the time, the government said new  staffers had been learning their roles and responsibilities, and had  subsequently received training and would take a “more cautious approach  to the management of email,” the newspaper reported.

Bain did not directly comment about his weekend phone call with Iliffe, which followed the inspection report.

“Throughout his time at TC Energy, I did  not have any private meetings with Mr. Iliffe,” Bain said in the  statement sent by the premier’s office. “On a few occasions, Mr. Iliffe  and I spoke on the phone on issues relevant to TC Energy and my role as  lead on various energy-related files including the sale of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line from TC [Energy] to the Nisga’a Nation.”

In March, TC Energy announced it was selling the transmission project, an approved gas pipeline, to the Nisga’a Nation. Construction of the pipeline, which will supply the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG project co-owned by the Nisga’a, is set to start in August.

‘A small class of political insiders who move back and forth between industry and government’

The absence of any records about Illife’s  communications with the premier’s office leaves some stakeholders  questioning whether the company was trying to circumvent the regulator.

“That could have been an email,” McPhail  said. “And why would you need to keep the premier’s office updated when  you have all these regulatory and management agencies whose  responsibility it is to do that? We’re supposed to have this system in  place to deal with this stuff — but what was very clear with Coastal  GasLink is the system was broken at every single level.”

McPhail said she still hasn’t received answers to questions she put to officials with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the BC Energy Regulator and the BC Environmental Assessment Office in 2022 regarding potential impacts of pipeline construction on fish habitat.

B.C. Environment and Climate Change  Strategy Minister George Heyman and the environmental assessment office  both declined interview requests from The Narwhal about TC Energy’s  lobbying activity.

In a statement, the ministry said the  office operates independently from government and neither the office nor  Heyman were aware of any of Illife’s phone calls to the premier’s  office.

The environmental assessment office said  it has conducted nearly 100 inspections along the Coastal GasLink  pipeline route by air and ground since construction began in 2019,  leading to multiple fines, more than 50 warnings and 30 orders,  including 13 stop-work orders.

Drew Yewchuk, a former staff lawyer at the  University of Calgary’s Public Interest Law Clinic, said he was not  surprised TC Energy was able to access the B.C. premier’s office so  readily. 

“Is having a lobbyist contact the  executive branch to have an unrecorded discussion probably asking for  special treatment good governance? No — but you don’t need a legal  expert to tell you that,” he told The Narwhal. “It reflects the Canadian  tradition of a powerful and secretive executive branch, and  decision-making involving a small class of political insiders who move  back and forth between industry and government.”

TC Energy did not directly respond to The  Narwhal’s questions about the lobbying activity. Previously, the company  told The Narwhal its role is to advocate for the changes needed to  ensure energy security, job creation, affordability and sustainability  and that the leaked calls included comments that portrayed a “false  impression” of how it does business.

“We continue to engage policy makers and  the public in an ethical and compliant manner while meeting our  regulatory obligations, including lobbying registrations across various  jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S.,” TC Energy senior vice-president  of external relations Patrick Muttart said in a statement on June 26.

“We are proud of our company and the work  that thousands of employees do each day to safely move, generate and  store the energy that our families, neighbours and businesses rely on.  We are driven by our purpose: delivering the energy people need, every  day.”

When pressed for more details, the company said it had nothing further to add to its previous response.

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